


A Harmonic Convergence

by returntosaturn



Series: Compass [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: F/M, India, Japan, Russia, Traveling, Unplanned pregnancy?, out of wedlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 08:35:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10213697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/returntosaturn/pseuds/returntosaturn
Summary: "Why didn't you tell me?" he hisses after several minutes of sitting across from her in unreadable silence."I didn't know..."His lips tighten and his gaze drops. He is rigid along the shoulders, knuckles tightening and loosening around the arms of his chair."I wasn't certain, anyways..."Silence swells again.“I didn’t know what to say…” She winces as she digs herself a larger hole. She’s never been good at putting down the shovel when it was necessary.// Tina discovers she's pregnant during the midst of traveling. A prequel of sorts to my earlier story The World Was Wide Enough but can be read alone.





	

Japan is not what she had expected. Not that she had much reference. She remembers the staunch, imposing looking woman with a flowing robe of emerald silk, a crown of white flowers, face powdered like a doll that she’d seen in Madame Picquery’s office some time ago; their Sama, she learns. She inferred that the place would be dull and unfriendly, but when they find their destination, she is forced to swallow her pride. The land is infinitely green and sloping in mountains and hills between which their villages were nestled like jewels to be mined.

It is wet, and warm, beautiful. 

And she is miserable.

She’d been feeling ill and irritable since their streak through Afghanistan and China. At first she’d thought it was the heat. The long commutes. Weird foods. Until she’d done the math in her head and realized that this woozy feeling correlated too closely with the missed cycle she’d overlooked. She managed to hide it well, she thought. After all, there wasn’t much to be done for her while hiking through rural China hunting out Re’em and stopping for hours to observe.

Still, she’d insisted to herself that it wasn’t certain. These were probably irregular symptoms at running late, and would blow over soon. She stayed silent, even as a bout of putrid nausea was so stiff that it woke her in the middle of the night and she laid awake to cry it out. She kept silent even as they took an uneasy journey to Japan that had her green in the face until they moored and made the journey on foot to the small, sparse village where they were to lodge.

When they arrive, she is lumbering behind him, and cuts her eyes at him when he glances back to check on her. A heavy woman white grey streaked through her dark hair, wearing a floral kimono bound too tight about her plump middle, greets them at the entrance to the house where they will stay. She’s pink-cheeked and warm natured with a polite smile and a bright voice that strings her native language together like a lengthy poem without punctuation, all sounds ringing out at once. 

Newt catches only a few words, nods, and repeats something back in reciprocation, indicating his thanks to whatever has been said. She hurries them inside and hastily gestures for them to leave their shoes at the little foyer that is stepped up from the rest of the interior.

Its takes a few moments of harried silence to unlace their boots before the woman huffs, plants her hands to her wide hips, and then gives a fluttering gesture that loosens them instantly.

Tina glances up, and the woman looks all too proud of herself.

“She’s a witch,” she hisses to Newt.

He throws her an impish grin. “Of course she is. But they call themselves Mahōtsukai.”

She stands, stepping out of her heavy soled boots and gazes up at their hostess. “That’s a mouthful,” she says, and the woman’s satisfied smile doesn’t flinch.

The woman points to herself and calls herself Okaasan, which makes Newt give a whispered chuckle. When they are ushered to a wide-windowed room that is to be their bedroom, he tells her this word means mother. 

Upon seeing their sleeping arrangements, her irritation seethes back into place. It is a custom, she guesses, but the thin mats that are spread in the center of the room, one for each of them, are certain to do nothing useful for the stiff pain she’s been holding in her lower abdomen. The room itself it huge and open, and is set at the end of the house so the blue-grey daylight seeps in through high windows and sheer screens. It could be worse, and she tries to overlook it and be grateful for what Newt has arranged. It proves difficult when she glances down at her appearance. 

She fusses with her muddy trousers and yanks her blouse out of the waist. She glares through the sliding screens and tall paneless windows to the lush green of the mossy trees outside and fixes her hands at her hips.

“Tina…I-Is everything alright? Has something upset you?”

She draws a breath, long and deep. Her response is half distracted. “Fine. Nothing. I’m just dirty. And tired.”

She turns, finding him divested of his suit jacket, the only layer he bothers with in this weather. His sleeves are rolled to his elbows, blouse untucked, folded at all angles on one of the little palettes that are their beds.

She collapses beside him, tucking her head up against his chin. His thumb finds the arch of her foot and presses.

“Mmm…I’m sorry I’ve been so fussy,” she admits.

“That’s alright.” He squeezes and rubs his hand from the arch to the ball of her foot. “I hope you do not regret accompanying me…” He drops his head, gazing in the direction of where their rucksacks and the case are discarded at the center of the wide expanse of wood floor.

“No!” she protests. His gaze snaps back to hers, hand still stroking at her aching feet.

She stretches, lying back against his palette, arms sprawling. It isn’t as unpleasant as she’d imagined, but she can only imagine what sleeping on this for a fortnight will do for her. She tries to hide her grimace. 

“I’m…” She curls onto one side. “…terribly homesick.”

It’s a thin excuse, but he seems to take it as the honest truth.

His gaze searches, then he decidedly drapes himself over her, balancing on hands and knees. “Well…I can’t conjure up any of your typical comforts. No hot dogs with mustard in Japan, I’m afraid.”

She laughs through her nose, turning so the sound lands against his cheek. 

“I wonder if there might be another way to remedy a complaint as wearisome as homesickness.” He kisses her cheek, an attempt to coax her into pliancy. 

He catches her lips, his kiss gentle but optimistic.

She reciprocates. But halfheartedly. He feels it. He leans back to stare down at her, searching for her honest trepidations. “These walls are thin as paper…” she chides.

His mischievous smirk falls, and she watches the knot in his throat bob when he swallows. “Right…”

He straightens, righting his shirt with a quick jerk. She wants to apologize, and yet doesn’t know how to begin. Sorry that she was an irritable nag? Sorry that she’d snubbed him? Sorry that she’d been harboring a truth that grew larger and more worrisome the longer she kept hold of it?

If she could just gather the nerve to speak, it would be out in the open, hanging in the crisp clean air. Instead she watches him stand and wade for the case. For a moment she thinks he’ll barricade himself inside, but he merely withdraws a thick journal of loose leaves and begins shuffling through it.

Something tells her there isn’t anything of particular importance in that book to be organized. Just something for his hands to fidget with while he fretted.

She shifts, moving to perch on her own little bed roll, righting her pillow and plucking an errant feather from it casing, twisting it between to fingers.

The tension blooms to a slow simmer, and finally she can’t stand it.

“Newt…” Her voice is too loud, puncturing the silence like a pin to a balloon.

His face snaps up, notes still gripped in his hands. His eyes are dark.

She groans out loud, twisting her neck to entice a relieving pop that couldn’t quite work itself out. Finally, she sighs and set her shoulders, takes a long breath…

A rapid chatter sounds at the door, a patter of little feet, and the screen is pushed open. Okaasan gestures expressively and bows fervently, coaxing them into the main room of the house for their supper and whatever Tina has tried to say is lost.

There are heavy pads of rice and bland root vegetables and some slick stuff Okaasan calls tofu that Newt enjoys well enough if his shy slurping is any indication. They hadn’t eaten all day, yet Tina can’t manage much more than a few pokes at her rice and a carrot or two before her appetite fails completely.

The tea served after is fragrant and light and she lets it soothe and unknot her tight posture, thoroughly calmed when they return to their bedroom and dress to sleep. 

She sets her teeth together and reaches for his hand in the space between them. An olive branch that he readily accepts, if to placate her or himself, she isn’t sure. She can’t think long on it, as his soft snores start their beat in a matter of minutes, and she’s lulled by the pattern of them.

-

Breakfast brings a porridge of rice and chicken that turns her senses on its very scent, and sends her running, tripping past the screen and off the porch into the trees to relieve herself.

Okaasan is sharp tuned to exactly what has occurred, and sits her in a wicker chair on the panoramic porch with a mug of tea, this time dark and tasting vaguely of bitter chocolate.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he hisses after several minutes of sitting across from her in unreadable silence.

"I didn't know..."

His lips tighten and his gaze drops. He is rigid along the shoulders, knuckles tightening and loosening around the arms of his chair.

"I wasn't certain, anyways..."

Silence swells again.

“I didn’t know what to say…” She winces as she digs herself a larger hole. She’s never been good at putting down the shovel when it was necessary. 

"I'll book passage back to New York," he says, rising to his feet in one sharp motion.

"No," she grinds out. "I don't _want_ that. If I wanted to go home, I would've said something."

"Tina," he argues. His volume is soft, but his tone betrays him, both weary and worried.

She glares. "I don't want to go home. I want to stay with you and I want to see the things you see."

Her voice breaks and for all the strength she'd just mustered, it's lost in a matter of seconds.

There’s a terrifying, empty beat before she can speak again. When she does, she has to draw an audible breath first.

“This is exactly why I didn’t say anything. Because it would ruin all this. Because you’d be upset and then I’d be upset and it…would be over.” The last words tumble out senselessly. It isn’t what she’s meant to say. She isn’t sure _what_ she’d meant, and tears sting her eyes so solidly that she forgets it all anyways.

“Tina…” The smoothed boards creak when he bends his knee, grasping for her mug and setting it aside before taking both her hands in his. “Tina, I’m not upset in the slightest.”

“Then why are we doing this?” She wipes her eyes pathetically, tries to lace her words with a defensive venom.

“I’m…” He searches the ground for his words. “…a bit _hurt_ about being kept from something like this, if that’s how you’d put it. But I could never be upset about receiving a gift like this.”

His thumb swipes away a tear on the apple of her cheek.

She snorts. “A gift?”

He leans up and forward to kiss her forehead. “I think so. Don’t you agree?”

She isn’t sure. So she swallows and measures a breath before responding. “Are you gonna fret over me all the time now?”

He smiles, squeezes her hands tightly, and this reinforces something within her. “I make no promises. But if you remain feeling ill like this, I might insist on a nap after lunch.”

He’s being facetious, so she gives a watery laugh when he presses a kiss to her cheek. 

“Thank you, Tina,” he whispers before he rises to his feet, and there’s too much there to decipher immediately, so she lets the mere words curl around her and balm her misgivings, and finishes her tea amongst the green landscape that seems somehow more pleasant and poignant than before.

-

"I want to marry you..." he tells her as they lay awake that night with the doors open, screens pulled back, a cool breeze mollifying the tight tension of the day. They’ve shimmied their mats closer together, face to face. Newt’s profile is bathed in blue moonlight, and she can see the curl of his pale eyelashes fluttering against his cheek.

"Don't make this into...something like that!" she hisses in the darkness. "We aren't obligated to do anything right now."

His hand finds hers on her coverlet. He twines their fingers and squeezes. "It isn't an obligation..."

As always, he speaks words she can’t find argument to. As always, he speaks his heart. 

"Well..." she manages. A tightness builds in her throat, and she reaches to pat his hand with her free one. She strokes at the rivers of veins there, patterns that she has already memorized. "Alright then," is all she can say without giving herself away for the umpteenth time today.

His mat rustles, and blindly she feels his lips on her knuckles. He lifts and moves their hands away, and presses his cheek against her stomach, nuzzling.

When she wakes to a sweet morning breeze perfumed by the cherry blossoms, their hands are still twined and Newt's palette is slanted diagonal to hers, his head close to hers, flop of hair shining bronze in the morning sun. He rouses easily when she kisses him awake, and they take breakfast together. She drinks her tea and feels more than well enough to accompany him into the damp forests where Occamys screech and peep, and she smiles fondly when he lets one snake about his fingers. 

They leave the a week later with a new clutch and a sack of loose tea leaves Okaasan provides. Their boat docks in Korea with Tina's stomach thoroughly rolling, but they stop for sweet pastries that are simple fried bits of dough and crisped sugar. They remind her of Jacob's treats at home, and render her chipper enough to make it to meet their train into the bitterness of Russia. 

Her spirits are lifted, and she’s sure its because the truth is finally out in the open and he hasn’t sent her away. She sees now that it was silly thought. That would never be in his nature, and she’s sorry she deceived herself to believe so. 

He doesn’t coddle her, at least not overly so. He makes sure she’s adequately fed, and that she has plenty of rest. And this is enough to soothe away the woozy sickness; just being loved warmly and fondly by the heart that has become a counterpart to her own. 

She naps in their private compartment on the train and wakes with her head in his lap, his hand stroking at her slim belly, and the threads of a dream—an image of the same smile he’d shared for the Occamy hatchlings, a tiny pink bundle in his arms—still dancing in her eyes.

-

Their tour in Russia is cold and blessedly quick. She finds that she's growing a bit, just the slightest roundness taking her stomach and making her trousers fit a little too snugly.

She finds silk skirt when the dip back down to India patterned with little dots and mandalas and a dress called a Sari that Newt takes particular interest in.

"Do you realize?" he says one evening while they lay on a straw tick mattress in a lodging that's not much more than a gazebo in the midst of a lush green rainforest. He’s already slipped her from the thin garment, himself bearing only his weathered trousers. "Our child will have traveled most of the world before they're even born."

Something squeezes and grows in her chest, too big to contain. Something like comfort and gratitude and millions of pieces of other things. She leans in, kissing him soundly until it's too warm in their little shelter and the hot wind catches the thin crimson drapes that hang about the place to keep it cool.

They whisper and plot, coming up with names and colors for the nursery, worried over when to move back to England, worried over her job, and finally left the issue to rest to be lulled to sleep by the temperate night, over their coverlets and curled into one another.

-

Queenie's teary smile is blossoming with what can only be described as a mix of relief and glee as she embraces her sister, squeezing her tight. Newt is not surprised when Tina doesn't protest her zealous affection. Her arms are pinned to her sides in Queenie’s vice of a hug, but a laugh bubbles its way out from her lips all the same. He returns the younger sister's smile when she catches his eye, and looks away on instinct, reaching to run a knuckle under his own eye, wiping at the tingling threat of moisture.

Jacob's hearty palm slams against his back, clasps his shoulder, knocking all sense of weepiness from him. 

"We're so happy for you two!" he exclaims, while Newt squares his shoulders in preparation for another friendly thumping.

Tina chokes. "I can tell," she manages when Queenie finally releases her and then takes to patting at her hardly visible bump.

"I'm going to fix something extra nice for dinner!" she declares. "Do you have any requests? A roast? Pie? Oh, I'll just whip everything up!"

The lamb rump is juicy and savory enough that even Newt manages a few bites before finishing the hearty stew of vegetables served alongside it. Tina indulges with grateful hums and lavish praise that Queenie absorbs readily, all smiles.

She is happy to be home, he can tell. He knows she has enjoyed herself, except of course for the few weeks she stewed by herself. But she thrives on simple comforts and as different as they are, the bond she holds with her sister is inimitable. So he doesn’t dare to feel resentful as she recounts their adventures over dinnertime with bright eyes and heavy gestures. Rather, he savors how their two worlds have combined to form this. To form them—the four of them—unlikely a quartet as they are.

-

A son comes like a wild gale, shaking her to her core and striping away all her expectations. He's ginger and already freckled and steals the heart from her chest on sight. 

Newt murmurs and coos at him while she hangs between sleep and drowsy wake, half convinced the sight before her now is a dream in itself. 

He tucks the blankets beneath the boy's chin and leans to kiss his tiny, wrinkled brow, and she drifts away.

-

Laurie is just three months old when they marry, sleeping in Queenie's arms while they say their vows to a Elven officeant, no taller than their knees, in the sitting room of Jacob & Queenie's brownstone.

He stays over night with his auntie and uncle. 

While the honeymoon is tender and indulgent and warm, allowing them time they haven't had in quite awhile to wander and touch, she is eager to take him back into her arms when Queenie meets them at the door the following morning.

She kisses his cheeks and croons over him all over again, while her Newt—her husband—watches them with tangible affection at the surface of his green eyes. Their son's eyes. 

It's recklessly perfect, and anyone would say they've done things the wrong way. Having a child out of wedlock, not having a house tied down, with plans for a long stayover in South America at Laurence's one year mark. But this little life was solely and uniquely theirs, and she would not count herself like a criminal and regret an ounce of it. It did not matter the order of events, it mattered the amount of improbabilities that had been defeated to come to this point. There are still things to decide on, but there is time for that, and strength enough among the three of them.

**Author's Note:**

> So I had this idea of Tina getting pregnant outside of marriage, and at the most inopportune time, and then it kind of melded into my earlier story to create a series because my muse is crazy. But I think they fit nicely together, and I think I have another part planned: an epilogue to the set. 
> 
> Also, forgive me if you're of any of the cultures represented here. I wanted the landscapes, the house in Japan, the little hut in India, to all kind of be wondrous and unreal, yet rooted in the basics of the culture. At least that's how I pictured them in my mind, and I hope it came across. Also, I didn't do a ton of research on language, because most of what I found was unreliable, and since I'm not familiar with the language in the first place, I hope I used the right context for the few words I did try and use.
> 
> Thanks for reading and feedback is appreciated!
> 
> ( tumblr: @allscissorsallpaper )


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